He walked down the dock, beer in hand, then set it down as the drivers tried to dock. They acted like they’d never driven a boat before. No clue about sail area, no clue about dual engines. The guy driving the Hustler powered up when he should have backed and slammed, hard, into the pilings. Ouch. Jesus Christ, they were fucking cherries. Real, “What’s a throoottle?” cherries. He could tell. Christ. Oh, this was so gonna suck.
“Vil, we suck,” Clarn said as he rebounded off the pier. “I think I just broke my boat.”
“We have to learn,” Vil said. “Remember what the man said, there is no such thing as too slow.” Vil was taking him at his word, barely creeping into the slot.
A bit of a crowd had come out of the bar. Fast boats were pretty common in the South Florida area, but five at once was somewhat unusual. As was a group with such bad boat handling skills driving them. Randy seriously didn’t want to do the introductions with people wandering around looking at the boats. But that was how it was going to go.
The Fountain was driven by a tall, really handsome guy. Hell, all ten of the group were damned good looking. Randy wasn’t a slouch, but these guys were drawing the girls for more than just the boats. The rest stayed in the boats as the guy clambered out. Randy had handled most of the line work with just a toss from the rear from the throttler.
The tall guy walked over and Randy held out his hand.
“Randy Holterman,” Randy said.
“Petty Officer,” the guy said. In Russian. Shit, somebody had been reading his service record. Randy had picked up the language thinking it might be useful. It had turned out to be about as useful as tits on a hog except for picking up the occasional Russian girl that hung around South Florida. “Lieutenant Vil Mahona, Georgian Mountain Infantry.”
“Hello, Lieutenant,” Randy said. “My Russian is poor now.”
“It will come back to you,” Vil replied. “Few will be able to understand us, yes? Oh, if asked, we are the Mountain Tiger Racing Team. I am team leader.”
Randy bent down and held up the bottle.
“This Mountain Tiger?” he asked, wrinkling his brow.
“That Mountain Tiger, yes,” Vil said. “We are here to learn to drive fast boat.”
“Mountain Tiger speed-boat racing team,” Randy said in English, shaking his head. “Is that anything like the Jamaican bobsled team?”
“I do not know,” Vil answered in Russian. “I do not know what bobsled is. Jamaica… is an island in the Caribbean, yes?”
“Yes,” Randy said, grinning and shaking his head.
“Well, let us talk,” Vil said, turning and waving to the rest of the team. “I see they serve our swill here. Let us find out how bad it is after travel.”
Chapter Eight
“This is suck,” Danes said in English, holding up the bottle. “Is shame upon our name. Is insult to Fera, Goddess of Beer. Is Mother Lenka knowing how bad this is?”
“Yes,” Beso said, belching. “Have you not heard her cackling about it?”
“I have,” Vil said, shaking his head. “Has been asking me to find reviews on internet. Have not seen her so happy since cutting up Chechens in pass. Is laughing so hard tears are coming out of eyes. Mother Lenka. Laughing.” He took a swig and winced. “World is coming to end.”
“Guys, this is good shit,” Holterman said, taking a sip. He couldn’t figure out what they were complaining about. Mountain Tiger was expensive as hell but it was the shit. It made the best German beer he’d ever had taste like Budweiser.
“It is swill,” Vil said, in Russian. “Fit only for pigs. Our pigs would turn up their noses. When we get to Bahamas, we will show you what good beer tastes like. But that is for later. We are needing to take boats to Nassau. You are coming with, yes?”
“Sure,” Randy said. “They said I’d be traveling. I’ve got a bag. But there’s a problem.”
“Which is?” Vil asked.
“Well, there’s about a thousand,” Randy said, shaking his head. “You guys are obviously clueless about boats. Okay, it’s my job to make you less clueless. But there’s one of me and ten of you. There’s five boats. I can only be in one place at a time. That’s problem one. Problem two is that all those boats don’t have the same range. I didn’t look close but they all look stock. Some of them are going to have more gas than others. If you’re planning on doing long runs, they’re going to need extended range tanks. On the way over we can tank at Bimini. But if you’re going to be doing distant running… you need more tankage.”
“Where can we get those installed?” Vil asked.
“The problem is not where,” Randy said, shaking his head. “The problem is when. The boat yards around here have a month or more backlog.”
“Can we do it in the Bahamas?”
“Same problem,” Randy said. “They’re backed up, too.”
“Where can we get this job done, quickly?” Vil asked, sighing. “Think outside the box, yes?”
“Any boat yard that has the parts and the time,” Randy said, shrugging. “The parts… some of them could be custom manufactured by a boat yard. Others you could order from the manufacturer if they’re in stock. But you need people that are capable of doing this stuff with boats. And they’re scarce.”
“Would your Navy have such?” Vil asked, cocking one eyebrow.
“Well, yeah, up at Little Creek they’ve got a mobile yard, but…” Randy paused and shook his head. “Don’t tell me you guys can…”
“We will see when we get back to base,” Vil said. “Next problem.”
“Timing,” Randy said, glancing at his watch. “I can’t figure out whether you guys are more of a menace in the intercoastal or offshore, but if we’re going offshore we need to clear the Bal Harbor cut. Now, you seem like fine people, but Bal Harbor any time but slack tide is a ball-buster. There are standing waves run twenty feet high. If you fuck up with one of these on those waves, you can do a somersault and pancake. You get me?”
“Turn upside down?” Vil said, frowning.
“Exactly,” Randy said. “It’s easier than it sounds. You have to keep your hand on the throttle, throttling up and back, anyway. You hit a wave, you jerk forward, you push the throttle forward, thing goes from a thousand RPMs to three thousand in an instant. You’re all of a sudden looking at sky then water then darkness. So we need to hit the cut at slack tide. It’s about twenty minutes from here if we hurry. Slack tide is in three hours. When slack hits, everybody who’s been too terrified to do the cut comes barreling through. So you’re going to have to be good enough in two hours and forty minutes to survive the traffic jam. Either that, or we’re staying here overnight.”
“We can do that if necessary but it is not preferred,” Vil said. “So we must hurry. Any other problems?”
“Oh, loads,” Randy said. “But one’s really bugging me.”
“What?” Vil asked, seriously.
“I got this sinking feeling that not one of you knows ‘Margaritaville’ by heart.”